Sophie and Baby Louis' Induction
August 2016

Just wanted to email you to say how amazing my labour was. 

 

So, I went in on the Thursday morning and had a Propess inserted at about 11:30. We sat all day waiting but had absolutely no indication that labour was progressing, no twinges or pains and pretty bored of sitting around and waiting in the hospital. I sent Tom home at 10pm as there was no point him staying in the hospital when nothing was progressing and promised that I would ring him if I felt anything at all. The midwives were also pretty confident that nothing would progress quickly and that when it did, it would take a long time to go anywhere with it being my first baby. 

 

At 4am, the midwife put me on the monitor as the baby's heart rate seemed slow and left me on there for about an hour. I could see on there the tightenings that I was having even though I had no pain at all and decided that after I came off the monitor that I would go in the shower just to kill time and freshen up really. When I went to the loo I had a show and got back to my bed at 7am and text Tom telling him that I thought things were starting. 

 

At this point I was getting surges every 2 and a half mins which were OK so long as I did my up breathing. When Tom arrived at 7:15 he went to find the midwife and told her how frequent they were so she came to examine me.....She confirmed that I was 8cm dilated and that they needed to get me to the labour ward. She couldn't believe that I had got to that point so calmly and so quickly for my first baby. 

 

I went down to the labour ward about 8:30 but my midwife said that she wanted to see if there was a bigger room available as she had alot of equipment to set up with my diabetes stuff. As she was out the room I told Tom that the surges were much worse and when she came back, I needed some gas to take the edge off. The midwife told me we had to move rooms before I could have the gas and asked me to walk to the room just down the corridor. As I was stood in the corridor, I got a surge and ended up bent over a silver trolley where my waters broke!!! 

 

I got into the room and onto the bed and the midwife examined me again. She panicked saying that I was fully dilated and had to call for assistance as she had not had chance to set up the room with the necessary equipment, as she expected to have more time to sort everything. Within 30 minutes, I was ready to push (and I totally understand what you mean when you say your body will just do it!!). I pushed for 6 minutes and Louis arrived!!

 

It was the most amazing experience!! The first thing i said was - Its not that bad, why do people make out its so painful. I didn't feel pain, I got pressure with the surges but aside from that I wouldn't say it was a pain, just an unfamiliar feeling. Louis came that quickly, I had no sliding scale for the diabetes so had a pretty normal birth, and they didn't even get the canula in my hand before he arrived. 

 

The midwives and all the staff couldn't believe how quickly he arrived, they said that it was a perfect, text book midwife led birth and that they couldn't believe how I had got so far, so quietly telling me I was the superstar for the day haha! It was great, so special and so amazing!